A gender reversed version, where females play males and vice versa, it’s a little difficult to get your head around the characters to begin with, and not only because of how they look. Helena (Matthew McFetridge) is a red bearded man, and a man has ‘duty’ to his mother.  ‘A scandal on my sex’ feels different when spoken by a man, and it’s almost uncomfortable to see him on his knees begging. All of this just proves how stereotyped our perceptions are and how gendered norms infiltrate everywhere. I never noticed before how Helena’s words ‘Two lovely berries moulded on one stem’ are so phallic until spoken by a man, or how a gentleman fearing a Bottom’s (Ailis Duff) lion is even more ludicrous than women. Charlotte Mulliner plays a brilliant Lysander, and Matt Maltby as Hermia brings out the indignation of being ‘low’ brilliantly.

Super fastpaced (just under two hours with an interval) it’s a bold performance that manages to be entertaining and provoke thoughts to consider. Sometimes confusing and certainly irreverent, a small cast where actors double up makes things even trickier. But it’s worth persevering, especially in a setting where chaos reigns. In fact, it’s a really brilliant way to raise the issue of gender roles and the power of the sexes, without overtly pressing it home. One small change to casting and the rest is in the power of the audience as they engage with the story.

Comedic and physical, touching and delicate, it’s a brilliantly executed performance that feels magical. Raising issues relevant to the era in which it’s performed, and exploring emotions and experiences universal to time and place, it is feels like it is exactly what Shakespeare intended.

Directed by Laura Jasper, tickets are selling out fast so head here as soon as you can. If you miss out you can find out about future productions on the Reversed Shakespeare Company’s website.

• A man chases a woman through a wood begging her to love him.
• Five incompetent women try, and fail, to put on a play to impress the royals.
• The king of the fairies falls madly in love with a woman disguised as a donkey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZWRhDcBB5I
If that all sounds a little different to what you’ve come to expect, that’s the idea. The Reversed Shakespeare Company was set up in 2015 by Lindsay Dukes, Cassie Webb and Matthew Maltby, and between them played roles from Romeo to Beatrice, via Miranda, Marina, Iago and Third Lord. Recognising that women make up 16% of Shakespeare’s characters, Women speak as few as 0.67% of the lines in some of Shakespeare’s plays, such as Timon of Athens, yet 68% of the London theatregoing audience is female there might be more for female actors to do than, in Lindsay’s words just be, ‘dragged across the stage as Lavinia or paraded in the brothel as Marina.’
They also wanted to see what would happen if men could see and experience the sort of vulnerability afforded to Shakespeare’s women but not to his male characters and in the process ask some questions. Are women and men all capable of the same actions, feelings and beliefs? How do women woo, and can men be wooed? Is vulnerability reserved only for the physically weak? Can a woman hold the space that men seem to have inherited naturally?
And crucially, can a woman with a donkey’s head and a need to steal the spotlight really win over the fairy king?
The debut production runs at The Pleasance Theatre from March 16^th-27^th, and features a programme of talks and discussions. Tickets are available here.